USB2 in BDP-1

[James Tanner - Bryston]

Hi Folks,

Thought you may find this discussion interesting:

Sent: September-26-11 1:01 AM
To: jamestanner@bryston.ca
Subject: Nousb 3 ?
Importance: High

Hello James

I just read a couple of forums and more than a few find it quite disturbing that you refuse to go to the future with usb3
such as this

USB overseers: No, USB 3 isn't late | Deep Tech - CNET News it is not only much better isolated but much much faster for transferring data, and from what I have read from others it can be a bit slow transferring data to your player. Is there any valid reason why you woud not want to be current and better in everyway especaily when all the latest larger drives are All usb3 ? thank you,

Robert.


HI Robert,

The BDP-1 uses USB to bring data from an external drive to the internal memory for reformatting and passing on the DAC. USB 1 Full Speed does not quite have the throughput (12 MBps) to handle high resolution files. USB 2 High Speed has a throughput of 480 Mbps which is more than ten times what is necessary to handle high resolution files. USB3 can pass even more data (3 Gbps) but brings requirements and system overhead that will not improve the sound and will increase the power requirements. USB3 extends from a PCI express interface which is not present or supported with the processor we use. Changing over to a system board that would support USB3 brings heat problems, requirements for a much larger power supply and a number of other aspects which will change the product completely but not improve the audio chain and can potentially degrade it.

Drives have SATA interfaces. External drives use internal hardware to convert them to USB, Firewire or eSATA. While it may make a difference loading data onto the drive, for playback the throughput requirements are much lower so the interface won’t change the playback properties.

James

[James Tanner - Bryston]

Hi James,

Some more input for you:

The BDP-1 allows transfer of files over Ethernet using Samba. The USB 2.0 interface is fast enough to not impede this operation. The only thing to be gained with the USB 3.0 interface is faster transfer of files when connected to a Windows computer with a 3.0 port. For our use in music playback 2.0 provides more than enough speed to quickly fill the buffer so play can begin. In practice play appears to begin immediately which of course customers appear to have a preference for.

Regarding the comment about better isolation relative to the existing 2.0 interface. I think he is confusing the original plan for an optical interface with the market reality of what the product became. Making discussion of the product history a real good marketing ploy on the part of Intel and the USB forum.

A comment typical of the tech industry is the following excerpt: "it cuts power consumption by a third, and it can be used to send 80 percent more electrical current". Is it any wonder customers become confused. Cuts power consumption with more current output. Wow, does USB 3.0 also feed the multitudes while taking fewer fish from the sea.

The reality is that for our purpose the existing USB 2.0 interface does the job very well. USB 3.0 devices can be used with a 2.0 interface, there is no reason to spend the extra money on 3. Any of the currently available low cost USB 2.0 enclosures will work just fine with any of the currently available SATA drives on the market. To keep things real simple I even recommend use of FAT32 formatting of the HDD. FAT32 is cross platform compatible and hard to imagine support for it ever going away on any platform due to it being ubiquitous.

Formatting a drive for FAT32 is not difficult on a Mac of Linux desktop. Unfortunately, Microsoft has removed support for creating a FAT32 volume from it's drive manager. This is likely because of the very cross platform compatibility discussed above. Why would a monopolistic enterprise want to make use across platforms easy?

Fortunately there are free small applications that can be used on Windows 7 to make FAT32 format volumes up to 2 TB in size such as: swiss knife windows 7 free download

Changing the format of a new drive for FAT32 is also very quick with any of the available tools.

USB 3.0 as with other drive formats like NTFS and HFS+ gain the listener nothing when used in the application of music playback. NTFS and HFS+ may actually bring unneeded baggage, including security and permissions issues the customer may accidentally engage, along with them. And the new software included with major brand NTFS formatted drives to make them work with Mac OS may very well present problems with all computer systems when it comes to reliability and speed. The new Seagate drives, for example, take longer to show up when connected to a Windows computer than is typical with other drives.

As always, the simple solution that does the job is best. There are much more important things for a customer to pay attention to in the pursuit of great sound for music playback in the home than concern over the latest thing from the computer industry. Unless, of course, the above mentioned pursuit is not true.

-Ray